Das erste Meer

The sea is just 40 kilometres away from their house in the West Bank, but the closed border to Israel means it is inaccessible to Wafaa and Raneen until, that is, a group of peace activists organise a trip to the coast of Tel Aviv. Wafaa is excited about her first visit to Israel. Raneen, however, will not accompany her, as she refuses to accept an invitation from anybody occupying her family’s country. Despite such sceptical voices, the packed coach travels over the border to the beach, and the Palestinian guests are soon splashing around in the cool water with their Israeli hosts. Meanwhile, with only a view over the huge wall to Israel, Raneen takes to protesting through her village. Documentary filmmaker Clara Trischler not only presents the problems of the Israeli settlement policy from a new and unusual perspective, but also highlights the contrariness of pro-Palestinian projects.

With a microsocial-cut approach, this documentary explores the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the small: The day-to-day, and the children.Preconceptions and the naturalization of unyielding positions are left exposed from the moment the project portrayed in "The First Sea" begins to take shape.This film shows the difficulties that can be encountered in any pro-peace initiative, when dealing with a struggle where antagonistic stances are so rooted in the idiosyncrasies of the people that each attempt gets entangled by the paradoxes of its own devising.